Triplet

  “It was not a dream,” she said aloud. “It was real. Real. I know it was.”

  Then why are you so vehement about it? a small voice seemed to whisper in the back of her mind.

  Because she really wasn’t sure.

  For a long minute she stood there, watching the clouds occult the unnaturally dim sunlight and thinking about what Melentha and Ravagin had said about Karyx’s brand of illusion. Of short duration, incapable of reacting well to the bombshell that she and Ravagin were from another world, playing to a limited audience—the Coven experience fit the pattern they’d described all too well. And if Ravagin was right, she wouldn’t know for a long time whether it had been real or not. If she ever found out at all.

  “I do not accept that,” she called out toward the post line. “You demons can be as clever as you want; you’re not going to screw around with my head like that. You understand?”

  There was no answer. All right, Danae; enough of the tantrum, already. Think it out. She had Melentha’s statement that her own internal evidence was no good. An independent observer? But Ravagin had been the only one there, and he’d already disqualified himself as a judge. That left only the demon-possessed people of Coven themselves … and there was no way she would travel that road again, even if she were given a guarantee that she would again be allowed to leave. And that was it. All who’d been present accounted for.

  Or was it?

  Danae caught her breath as a new possibility suddenly hit her. Crazy … but it might just give her the answer.

  At an unknown but possibly extreme risk to herself. She sobered at the thought, knowing what Ravagin would say if he knew what she was considering. And what Melentha would say.

  That she was being childish.

  Danae’s teeth clamped tightly together. Well, then, she was perfectly capable of doing all this without them. Of showing them both how the “child” could manage on her own.

  Moving quietly, she walked to the door and eased it open. Melentha should still be busy with her spirit work; Ravagin would almost surely be asleep by now. With luck, she would be back before either of them missed her.

  And then they’d really see something.

  The man’s name was Gartanis, and he was ancient.

  Not just old. Old people weren’t all that common in Besak, but Danae had seen enough during her visits to know what old age looked like on Karyx. Without the blunting of reconstructive surgery or biochip internal work, of course, the effects of aging were much more pronounced here than in the Twenty Worlds; but even given that, Gartanis was an oddity. Wrinkled, his vanishing hair gone snowy white, his vision and strength fading, he looked to Danae to be almost literally on his last legs.

  All in all, not what she’d expected of the man alleged to be the most knowledgeable spirithandler in Besak.

  “So,” he wheezed as he waved his gnarled stick toward a chair across the pentagram-inscribed table from him. “What can I do for you, my young lady?”

  “My name is Danae,” she told him. “I’ve been in the area for several days now, talking to various of the tradesmen in Besak about a new kind of bow I would like to market—”

  “Ah,” Gartanis’s eyes seemed to light up briefly. “You’re the one. I’ve heard tales of you from others in the village.”

  “Yes,” Danae nodded, obscurely surprised that he kept up that much with current events. “As I said, I’ve been marketing a bow that can be used as is or with trapped-spirit enhancement, and it occurred to me that you might have spells for sale that I might be able to use in my work.”

  For a long minute he sat motionless in his seat, eying her in a way she was not at all certain she liked. “I was informed that you sold spirithandling spells here,” she said as the silence lengthened. “If I was informed wrong—”

  “Olratohin kailistahk!”

  She jumped at the other’s sudden shout. “What—?”

  “Be silent,” he rumbled. “… no. No, I was wrong—there are no spirits about you. But there is something else …”

  He trailed off, and Danae swallowed painfully. She’d taken off the Coven robe as soon as they’d arrived back at Melentha’s mansion and she hadn’t come near the thing since … but there was no guarantee that something else hadn’t been done to her. “Is it something bad?” she half whispered, afraid of breaking his concentration.

  “I don’t know for certain,” he said slowly. “But … ah; that’s it. Coven. You’ve been to Coven.”

  Her heart seemed to skip a beat. “How can you tell?” she managed to ask.

  “Eh? Oh, I heard it from one of my sprites, of course. That spirithandler you’ve been staying with—Melentha—sent out the word early this morning.”

  Danae got her breathing going again. “Oh.”

  The old man’s eyebrows seemed to twitch. “You seem troubled by something. Something about Coven?”

  “It … has to do with Coven, yes,” she said cautiously. “It’s really what I came to see you for in the first place. I’d like to buy a spell for invoking a demogorgon.”

  There was no reaction beyond a tightening of the wrinkled skin around Gartanis’s eyes … but when he finally spoke his voice was oddly hollow. “A demogorgon. You wish to invoke a demogorgon.”

  “Yes,” Danae nodded, forcing her voice to remain calm as her heart began speeding up again. “Is there a problem? I was under the impression all spirits could be invoked.”

  The old man’s eyes seemed to come back from somewhere else. “Oh, surely, traderess,” he snorted. “All spirits can be invoked. And all animals can be captured, too. Tell that to the foolish hunter stalking a maddened cintah.”

  Cintahs had been mentioned in the original Triplet orientation sessions. Usually in conjunction with emergency defensive spells. “Are demogorgons that dangerous?”

  “Dangerous? Not necessarily. Not even always.” Gartanis’s eyes bored into hers. “But they are unpredictable.”

  Danae licked her lips. “For instance?”

  He was silent a long while. “How old do you think me?” he asked at last.

  She considered, remembering to judge by Karyx standards. “Seventy years. Perhaps seventy-five.”

  He shook his head. “A hundred forty-seven.”

  “What?” she whispered, feeling her stomach tighten within her. Average life expectancy on Karyx was supposed to be only about fifty-eight …

  “A hundred forty-seven,” he repeated. “I was fifty when in my pride I traveled to the Illid ruins and invoked a demogorgon. This was the result.”

  “But to have gained nearly a hundred years of life—”

  “Life?” he snapped. “You—in the prime of your youth—you would consider this life?”

  She frowned. “But surely you weren’t always like—” She caught her breath. “You were like … like you are now?”

  Gartanis’s eyes focused elsewhere again. “Yes. A high price for my arrogance.”

  Silence descended on the room. Danae felt her hands trembling in her lap, found her eyes tracing the deep valleys cutting through his cheeks. To be so old for so long … it sent chills up her back. “What … what else happened? Were you able to talk to the demogorgon?”

  “What does it matter?” he murmured. “Whatever I may have learned wasn’t worth the price.”

  “No. I don’t suppose it was.” She took a deep breath. “Well … would it be safer to try and contact an elemental?”

  He looked at her sharply. “Explain to me this brash desire to commune with the great powers, traderess Danae. Is your pride then so terribly swollen?”

  She sighed. “I was hoping to get some information. Something happened to me in Coven, something that made no sense. I want to understand it, and I can’t think of any other way to get the answers.”

  “Perhaps a peri or demon could help. Their invocations are certainly safer.”

  “The peris and demons are already in it up to their necks,” she shook her head, feeling her resolve draining
away. “I don’t think I could trust anything they would have to say on the subject. But I suppose it doesn’t matter all that much.” Just like a child, she thought bitterly. Quitting when the cost gets too high. But he was right. Whatever was happening in Coven wasn’t worth risking this kind of twilight life over. “Thank you for your time, Master Gartanis,” she continued, getting to her feet. “If you’ll tell me what I owe you—”

  She broke off at the expression on his face. “Demons and peris involved on their own?” he asked. “Not simply obeying orders from a human spirithandler?”

  “It seemed that way, yes,” she said cautiously. “Unless there was someone far in the background controlling things. I don’t think the demon-possessed people we met had any real say as to what happened.”

  “The demons made decisions on their own?” Gartanis persisted. “They didn’t simply go off somewhere and return with new orders?”

  “Again, I think so. Why?—is it significant?”

  Gartanis took a deep breath, his eyes glazed over. “When I was in communion with the demogorgon a hundred years ago … I remember some of it. A vision of—never mind. A corruption of the present, I thought at the time … but perhaps it was instead a vision of the future. Of now.” Abruptly, his eyes came back; and gripping his stick, he worked himself out of his chair. “Come into the back room with me,” he wheezed. “I’ll get you the materials you’ll need to invoke the demogorgon.”

  “Wait a second,” Danae said, taking an automatic step backwards. “What’s this vision thing you’re talking about? And anyway, I’m not sure any more I want to know how to invoke a demogorgon.”

  Gartanis looked up at her, his eyes burning. “You will,” he said softly. “You must.”

  “Why?” Danae persisted.

  “Because you already know something of the danger. And because if you do not, all of Karyx will pay a heavy price … and you along with it.”

  But I won’t even be on Karyx much longer. She left the thought unsaid, and for a long moment she and Gartanis stood facing each other. Then, carefully, the old man turned and hobbled back toward the rear of the house. “Follow me,” he said.

  Swallowing, she obeyed.

  The knock on his door snapped Ravagin awake. “Come in,” he growled, glancing through slitted eyelids at the curtains pulled across the windows. There was still light coming through the material, which meant it was probably late afternoon. He’d had several hours of sleep, though it sure didn’t feel like it.

  The door opened; but it was Melentha, not Danae, who came into the room. “Have you seen Danae?” she asked without preamble.

  “Where, in my dreams?” he growled. “I’ve been asleep, in case you hadn’t noticed. What do you want her for?”

  “I don’t want her for anything,” Melentha snapped. “She and a horse are missing, and I want to know where she’s gone.”

  “Damn her.” Ravagin hissed an angry breath through his teeth. “Ten’ll get you twenty she’s gone off to Besak again.” He sat up, started to swing his legs out of bed, and froze as a sudden thought struck him. “The Coven robe—where is it?”

  “Still here,” Melentha assured him. “Don’t worry, even Danae’s not dumb enough to get near that thing again. No, she’s off somewhere on her own, getting into who knows what kind of trouble.”

  “Yeah.” Ravagin got his legs out of bed, snared his tunic from the sidetable. “Can you get some sprites out looking for her?”

  “Already done that. No results yet.”

  “Figures.” Sprites were great for carrying out specific orders, but something open-ended like a general search was largely beyond their limited intelligence. “We might as well start with Besak. You have some horses ready?”

  “They will be in a minute. Meet you downstairs.” Melentha vanished, closing the door behind her.

  Damn her, anyway. Pulling his boots on, Ravagin grabbed his short sword and jogged down the hallway. That was it—the very last straw. Danae had disobeyed a direct order; and when they found her this trip was going to be officially aborted. He was through putting up with her childish reactions and her half-thought schemes and most of all of her damn psychological experiments with him as white rat.

  And whichever heading this latest stunt came under, it was her last. He and Melentha would find her, dust her off if necessary, and bring her back … and tomorrow morning they would be on their way back to the Tunnel.

  Chapter 20

  THE SUN WAS NEARING the western horizon by the time Danae returned to Melentha’s mansion, and she was nearly to the archway in the post line before it registered that there were no lights showing in any of the windows.

  She reined her horse to a halt, frowning as her eyes flicked over the grounds for signs of life. But no one was visible, at least not on this side of the house. Could everyone be in Melentha’s inner sanctum, perhaps, working on God only knew what?

  “Danae.”

  She jerked at the voice, spinning to look behind her. No one. “Who’s there?” she called.

  “Do not pry into matters that are none of your business.”

  She licked her lips, fighting down a surge of panic. Her eyes darted all around—

  Came to rest on the carved demon face in the archway.

  Oh, God, she thought, stomach tightening painfully as she automatically clutched the pouch Gartanis had given her. She’d had more than her fill of demons at Coven, and the last thing she wanted right now was a confrontation with another one. “What do you want?” she asked, fighting unsuccessfully against the trembling in her voice.

  “Do not pry into matters that are none of your business,” the demon repeated.

  “Why isn’t it my business? Your friends dragged me to Coven and scared me half to death—I figure that makes it my business.”

  The stone didn’t change … but even as she watched, the demon’s eyes seemed to take on a fox-fire glow. “You are not of this world. It is not your concern. You will not interfere.”

  Danae licked her lips … but even as a new shiver of fear ran up her back, an odd surge of determination flooded in on top of it. She’d been right—there was something going on in Coven—and the demon’s attempt to scare her was just one more bit of evidence that whatever it was was important as well as nasty.

  The demon’s futile attempt to scare her, she remembered suddenly. Its limits had been well defined for it … or at least had been so once. Mentally crossing her fingers, she twitched the reins and started tentatively forward—

  “You will not interfere!”

  The horse shied violently, and it took all Danae’s equestrian skill to bring it back under control … and by the time she’d done so the last of her fear had been completely buried under a white haze of fury. “Forget it!” she snarled at the demon. “You can just forget it. I’m a human being—I give you the orders on Karyx. And in case you’ve forgotten, I was right there watching when Melentha told you to allow me free passage. So knock off the bluff-and-scare tactics and let me through.”

  For a long moment she could feel the demon’s resistance like an invisible balloon filling the archway. Then, reluctantly, it collapsed into itself and faded away. Gripping the reins tightly, Danae guided her horse through, fighting the urge to kick the animal to full gallop and get the hell away from there. But she really did have nothing to fear from the demon … and she was damned if she would lose her dignity to a spirit trapped in a chunk of stone.

  But still she couldn’t resist taking a quick look behind her as she started up toward the house … and so it was she saw the green patch of haze detach itself from the post line and skim off toward the southeast.

  They had spent over an hour in Besak before they finally found someone who remembered seeing Danae.

  “Yes—the traderess with the fancy bow, true?” the hunter asked. “Yes, I saw her some time ago over on the Hawkers’ Way.”

  “Was she talking to the weapons sellers?” Ravagin asked.

  “Not
when I saw her. She was already past most of their booths, heading toward the south.”

  Ravagin looked at Melentha. “Anything down that way she might have been interested in? Or anyone?”

  Melentha shook her head slowly, forehead furrowed in thought. “Not that I can think of. How long ago was this?”

  The hunter glanced at the setting sun. “Three hours at the least. Possibly longer.”

  “Well, whatever she wanted there shouldn’t have taken this much time,” Ravagin growled, feeling his jaw tighten. He’d been right; Danae was in some sort of trouble again. “We’d better get down there and see if we can pick up her trail.”

  “She could just be browse shopping,” Melentha suggested slowly.

  “Or perhaps gone to see Gartanis,” the hunter suggested.

  “Who is—?” Ravagin began.

  “DAMN!” Melentha exploded. “Of course—that damn idiot’s gone to Gartanis to buy a spell.”

  “Who’s Gartanis?” Ravagin asked, fighting against the infectious emotion almost visibly radiating from Melentha. “Is he a fraud or something?”

  “He’s a spiritmaster who came here from Torralane Village a few months ago,” Melentha bit out. “And, no, he’s not a fraud. At least not a deliberate one.”

  “Well, let’s go talk to him, then,” Ravagin suggested, wheeling his horse around. “Danae might even still be there.”

  “It may not do any—AHH!”

  Ravagin twisted his head around. “What?” he snapped.

  Melentha’s eyes were wide and unfocused. “She’s at the house,” she breathed. “She’s … gone inside.”

  Ravagin felt the tension beginning to drain from his muscles. “Well, great,” he sighed. “Then at least she’s safe—”

  “No, no, no. Don’t you understand? She’s been to Gartanis. She has the incense for a new spell—surely she’s going to want to try it out.”

  “Oh, hell.” An untried spell, from a spiritmaster … in the hands of an amateur. Would Danae really be foolish enough to try something like that alone?

  Of course she would, he thought viciously. “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s get back, try and stop her.”